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Recipe for Ancient Mandrake Beer
Hello Guys,
Ingredients
4 pounds malt extract
2 pounds dark brown sugar
1/2 ounce dried mandrake root
4 gallons water
Yeast (amount depends on the product)
Boil water and mandrake root for one hour and strain. Add malt extract and sugar to cooling wort and stir until completely dissolved. Cool to 70 degrees F, pour into fermenter, and add yeast. Ferment until complete. Prime bottles with sugar, bottle, and cap. Ready in one to two weeks.
Hi jonathan,
1. Mandrake is one of the most powerful plants in the Solanacea family of plants. Contains the same type of alkaloids as belladonna, brugmansia, datura, but in a different mix, and has some of it's own dangerous alkaloids not found in those other plants.
However, it has a long history of use in beverages, and has purported aphrodesiac qualities if the dose is just right. And indeed if you use it "just so' it IS a good aphrodesiac, as far as my own testing is concerned.
I once made an approximation of an old recipe for "wine of Cleopatra" which is supposed to be an aphodesiac concoction. It was a macerated product, and I used 1/2 ounce mandrake root (really good quality, potent "real" mandrake root from Maya). It, along with other herbs, was macerated in 1.75 liters of red wine, allowed to soak for a week. I cautiously tasted of it. Through experimentation, I found out that the wine cannot be drunk in normal size glasses, oh no! It 's perfect dose was 1-2 shots, three on a dare. Consumed like that, it was a good aphrodesiac. Any more consumed, and I got the same feeling I got when taking a bit too much datura, first thing noticed in the way of bad side effects is the most horribly dry (to the point of being painful nearly) cottonmouth. Which is, of course the first sign of poisoning.
You must be aware that many herb shops are selling other plants as "mandrake". The only plant that is real mandrake, for the purposes of this discussion, is Mandragora Officinarum. So if you are going to make this beer, make sure you get that particular species of plant, if you want the effects to be the same as the authentic old recipe you are going to re-create.
Also I'm looking at your recipe, using 1/2 ounce of Mandrake root in 4 gallons of water to make the beer. With that ratio of herb to liquid content, given my past experiences with the mandrake wine, your concentration of alkaloids will be much lower than it was in my wine. Which should allow you to actually enjoy 1-2 12-ounce glasses of the beer without having any of the negative side effects set in. This will NOT be a beer you can keep on drinking glass after glass after glass though.
I also bought a bottle of the commercially made "Mandragora" liquer from that certain vendor in Spain that sells the absinthe. Similar effects from that drink as to the wine I made, and as with the wine, it was a shot, two on a dare, that turned out to be the correct dose. Definitely not a liquer to keep drinking shot after shot after shot, either.
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